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Sharp to join 3D TV battle with advanced display (Reuters)Reuters - Japan's Sharp Corp said it would begin selling 3D-capable LCD TVs in Japan this summer, the latest consumer electronics maker to enter the market for what is expected to be the industry's next hit product.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 12 Apr 2010 | 4:06 am Microsoft to roll out Visual Studio upgrade (InfoWorld)InfoWorld - Without further adieu, Microsoft will release on Monday its Visual Studio 2010 software development system and the accompanying .Net Framework 4 platform, followed later in the week by the release of the Silverlight 4 rich Internet plug-in software.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 12 Apr 2010 | 4:00 am Photoshop CS5 Beta: Lots of Refinements to Solid Program - Washington Post
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 12 Apr 2010 | 3:46 am Germany’s Friendticker Recycles Foursquare, But With A Real CRM Backend Since Foursquare never officially checked-in to Germany, another company has decided to become the local Mayor. The clone company Friendticker came out its beta on Friday with a banging underground party in one of Berlin's secret club locations. Officially, the business of ruling Germany's location wars starts today.
As is generally widely known, Germany has a very environmentally sustainable economy. There are recycling bins everywhere. So it's nice to see the recycling has extended to the layout and functionality of Foursquare. Friendticker's site and iPhone app resembles Foursquare with only minor changes and the browser bar's favicon looks very much like Facebook's - only in purple. However, look under the hood and Friendticker has features you won't find in Foursquare and Gowalla such as a greater emphasis on loyalty rewards and a full-blown Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to allow local businesses to control their offers.
Source: TechCrunch | 12 Apr 2010 | 3:37 am Netflix Starts Shipping Free Instant Streaming Disks To Wii Owners
Nintendo and Netflix initially announced partnership plans in January and are making Netflix on the Wii fully available as of today, after putting out a teaser and sending out disks to a subset of members a couple of weeks ago. Streaming from Netflix via the Wii console is provided at no additional cost to members who have a plan starting at $8.99 a month. Netflix announced that it had 12.3 million members at the end of 2009, and Nintendo says more than 28 million people are using the Wii console today. Check out Crave’s hands-on review of Netflix on the Wii for more. For the record: this marks the online DVD rental pioneer’s third major video game streaming deal, following agreements with Microsoft for the Xbox 360 and Sony for the PlayStation 3. The roll-out of Netflix on the Wii comes right off the heels of renewed distribution agreements with Universal Studios and 20th Century Fox.      
Source: TechCrunch | 12 Apr 2010 | 3:35 am Like.com Brings A Live, Glamour Magazine Trained Stylist To The iPhone
Once you open the application, you can take a picture of your proposed outfit or clothing item, choose your destination (i.e. dinner at a fancy restaurant, concert, picnic in the park) and ask your fashion question. Within minutes a real-life stylist will send you an answer and, if applicable, a recommendation on other items to complement your look. You will receive a push notification alerting you that your response is ready. If push is off, then you can get a notification via SMS. So why trust these stylists? Like.com has partnered with Glamour Magazine to train each stylist in the science of fashion and style. The app also offers features branded-stylists from retail stores. Of course, you don’t have to be in front of your closet to use the app. If you are shopping at a store and are having trouble choosing between a style of shoes or aren’t sure if the coat is fashion forward, you can call on a stylist to help with the decision. Stylists are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week and responses generally arrive within 2 minutes of the question. If applicable, the Stylist will offer suggestions on fashion pieces to complement the looks to make your outfit even better. If you choose a retail stylist, you can get suggestions from their brand, specifically. On occasion, a stylist will recommend a product with a clickable link that will take you to a site where you can buy the product. Munjal Shah, CEO of Like.com, says the app doesn’t have any revenue streams at the moment but will soon be integrated into a stealth site that compliment’s the app’s functionality. The app is part of Shah’s strategy of bringing interactive shopping tools to the online soft goods shopping experience. Couturious shows you how to wear styled looks on the web. Weardrobe helps you to be visually inspired with streetstyle looks; Covet helps you to visually personalize your shopping (using celebrity photos), Like.com helps you to visually shop for soft goods and now the new app adds a personalized styling consultant to the mini-empire’s offerings. Like.com, which launched in 2006, is growing steadily both in revenue and platforms. The startup raised $32 million in funding during the implosion of the financial industry, with a valuation just north of $100 million. And the startup is churning out verticals at a rapid pace. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 12 Apr 2010 | 3:31 am Adobe Flash CS5 Exports Animations To HTML5 CanvasAn anonymous reader writes "Adobe's Flash CS5 will seek to make the Flash runtime less relevant with support for exporting animations to HTML5 canvas. Seth Weintraub from 9to5mac writes, 'In a previous post, I'd wondered why Adobe didn't spend their time building HTML5 Authoring tools rather than putting so much time/energy/money into their Flash->iPhone Apps exporter tool for Flash CS5. As it turns out, Adobe does have some, albeit rudimentary, HTML5 Canvas exporting tools as demonstrated in the video above.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 12 Apr 2010 | 3:07 am Sharp to Sell 3D Televisions - Wall Street Journal
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 12 Apr 2010 | 2:26 am Sharp announces world’s first four-primary-color, super-bright 3D LCD
We all know Sharp is particularly strong in the LCD panel space, which means it’s not a big surprise the company is the first to announce a 3D LCD with four base colors (Sharp has added yellow to the usual trio of red, green and blue). The company also claims the new screen is about 80% brighter than conventional models, boasting the highest brightness in the industry. The display will be sold in Japan “sometime before summer”, as part of Sharp’s Aquos LCD TV line (they showcased a 60-inch prototype during a press event in Tokyo). Global sales are scheduled to start by the end of this year. Executive Vice President Masafumi Matsumoto said his company will reveal technical details about the device next month.
What we know is that unlike the smaller 3D display Sharp announced a few days ago, the new TV will require glasses. It will also feature side-mount scanning LED backlight technology to boost picture quality and a response time of less than 4ms. Sharp bets high on 3D. The company expects the 3D TV market to expand to 10 million units in 2012. 3D AQUOS TVs are expected to reach 5-10% of all AQUOS models within the first 12 months, with Sharp projecting this number to grow to 20-30% after that. Via AV Watch [JP]
Source: CrunchGear | 12 Apr 2010 | 2:21 am Adobe Releases Major Upgrade of Creative Suite: It Can Bend Elephants, But Will It Make the "SoftWar" With Apple Worse? [BoomTown]
Although caught in an ever-noisier squabble with Apple over the banning of its popular Flash technology on the iPhone, iPod and iPad and more, Adobe Systems is pressing forward with the release of one of its most important products–an upgrade of its popular and highly profitable Creative Suite software. It is the most significant update in several years and the success of the latest version of its collection of graphic design, video editing and Web development applications, CS5, is critical, as it is responsible for close to 60 percent of the San Francisco software maker’s revenue, or $1.7 billion last year. That’s due to the popularity of the well-known Adobe (ADBE) products in it, such as photo-editing program Photoshop and its Flash video technology. New features for both are in CS5, including more ability to manipulate images and add interactive elements more easily, as you can see in the video below. Costs to upgrade range from just above $1,000 to upwards of $2,500, depending on the version. But some of the improvements in CS5 are at the heart of its problems with Apple (AAPL), including tools that let developer write an application once and deploy it on a lot of devices. That has been a workaround due to Apple’s current ban on Flash on the iPhone and, now, the iPad. Apple moved again last week, adding in rules that apps cannot use a middle layer of software to run on its operating systems. Let’s just say it is not in Apple’s interest to have apps easily available on other mobile platforms, such as, say, the Google (GOOG) Android operating system. Of course, Adobe could not let the release go by without an Apple slap, noting in its blog post on the CS5 release last night: “You know for a supposedly slothful company, Adobe sure launches a lot of products.” Apple CEO Steve Jobs had reportedly called Adobe engineers “lazy” at an employee meeting. So, until the trash talking stops, here’s a video of Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch giving me a tour of some cooler aspects of CS5, which will get to customers in the next month: [ See post to watch video ] Source: All Things Digital | 12 Apr 2010 | 2:04 am Smartphone maker Palm is seeking a buyer - report - Reuters
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 12 Apr 2010 | 2:03 am Has Steve Jobs Gone Mad? [Voices]By Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Contributor, Fortune Brainstorm Tech The hottest topic in tech these days — and the lead item all weekend in Techmeme — is an obscure clause in Apple’s (AAPL) latest Developer Program License Agreement, the document programmers must conform to if they want to be part of the bonanza that is the iTunes App Store (185,000 apps and counting). It’s a discussion that echoes complaints about Apple’s essential controlling nature that date back a quarter century to the original Mac and which have returned full-force with the release of the iPad — a device that has been called the Disneyland of Computers, and not in a nice way. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 12 Apr 2010 | 1:26 am Teaching About Web Includes Troublesome Parts [Voices]By Stephanie Clifford, Reporter, New York Times When Kevin Jenkins wanted to teach his fourth-grade students at Spangler Elementary here how to use the Internet, he created a site where they could post photographs, drawings and surveys. And they did. But to his dismay, some of his students posted surveys like “Who’s the most popular classmate?” and “Who’s the best-liked?” Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 12 Apr 2010 | 1:17 am Why 9:41 Is the Official Time of Apple Product Photos [Voices]By Dan Nosowitz, Contributor, Fast Company Every iteration of the iPhone’s mockups showed the time as 9:42. The iPad showed it as 9:41. It’s slightly peculiar–the times are grouped tightly enough to be intentional, but why those numbers? Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 12 Apr 2010 | 1:09 am Zynga’s Newest Game: FrontierVille
Next up is FrontierVille, if the screenshots I saw while logged in to Facebook as a Developer Test Account are to be believed. The game description? Click and then keep clicking. Ok, not really. It’s “Howdy Pardner! Let’s explore a new life on the frontier. You gotta chop trees to construct buildings, clear land to raise livestock, plant crops, and raise a family. The untamed wilderness is hazardous, but your fellow pioneers are there to help.” Milestones include things like “learned the ropes,” “just broke ground for a new homestead!,” and “just finished building a General Store in FrontierVille.” I just wish they’d create BloggerVille. I think I’d be really good at that. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 12 Apr 2010 | 1:07 am Journalism of the Future Will Be Fueled by Contests and Rating Systems [Voices]By Molly Fischer, Writer, New York Observer The Business Insider posted a survey that AOL’s (AOL) “Seed” content farm recently sent out. And while TBI focuses on the prospect of outsourced copy-editing and fact-checking, we find ourselves more interested in the implied psychological portrait of a Seed contributor. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 12 Apr 2010 | 1:02 am Elgan: Uh, Oh. Here Comes iPad Addiction! [Voices]By Mike Elgan, Contributor, Computer World My son was watching TV on my iPad the other day (slumped on the couch with big headphones on) when it occurred to me: Is the iPad addictive? He was sitting in front of our big-screen, HDTV, which was turned off. His big-screen laptop was nearby — also turned off. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 12 Apr 2010 | 1:01 am CrunchGear Week in Review: Pro-Am Edition
Slow-motion RC cars look shockingly awesome
Source: CrunchGear | 12 Apr 2010 | 1:00 am Is a Twitter Developer Revolt Brewing? [Voices]By Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal A lot of Twitter’s success has been helped along by outside tools that make the site easier to use–things like URL shortener bit.ly and apps for mobile phones. These applications weren’t made by Twitter itself but by third parties–and now those third parties are angry at what they see as a looming Twitter attempt to crush them. Ahead of Twitter’s conference for developers next week, Twitter investor Fred Wilson wrote a blog post saying that the time for apps that filled “holes” in the Twitter platform “has come and gone.” What does it mean for the developers of those apps? It’s unclear, but Twitter released an official app for BlackBerry this morning. That could mean trouble for existing BlackBerry app Ubertwitter, and other developers are worried that their products will be next to face an official competitor. Nicholas Carlson at Silicon Alley Insider called the post “a bombshell on Twitter app-makers.” Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 12 Apr 2010 | 1:00 am Bloomberg Reports That Palm Is Up For Saleleetrout writes with this excerpt from a story at Bloomberg News "Palm Inc., creator of the Pre smartphone, put itself up for sale and is seeking bids for the company as early as this week, according to three people familiar with the situation."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 12 Apr 2010 | 12:13 am Andy Xie: China Property is a "B'-Word, But That's Only Part of the ProblemAndy Xie weighs in on China's real estate-related lending reforms, and he find them wanting: China's property market is a massive bubble. The stock of residential properties, developers' inventories,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Apr 2010 | 11:54 pm St. Bernard Dog Collar BarrelBy Andrew Liszewski The idea that St. Bernards roam snowy mountains with miniature barrels of hooch strapped to their collars in search of trapped hikers is another one of those ‘facts’ I learned...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Apr 2010 | 11:40 pm Seagate BlackArmor PS 110 USB 3.0 Drive Kit Reviewed. Verdict: USB 3.0 Should Have Come SoonerBy Ian Chiu [ The following article is syndicated with permission from Everything USB ] USB 3.0 is here. While not everyone has immediately hopped on the bandwagon yet, several major motherboard and storage...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Apr 2010 | 11:31 pm Is TweetUp Bill Gross' Second Overture?It sure sounds that way, from this NYT story.: Bill Gross, the serial entrepreneur who pioneered search advertising, is unveiling a venture on Monday that aims to make money by allowing people using Twitter...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Apr 2010 | 11:29 pm Romain Jerome's New Moon Invader WatchBy Andrew Liszewski It’s hard to criticize Romain Jerome for their recent rash of gimmicky watch designs since I’d never actually heard of the company before they started incorporating dinosaur...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Apr 2010 | 11:10 pm China 3G standard phone sales to surge (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 Apr 2010 | 11:02 pm Adobe Photoshop CS5 Boldly Empowers the Digital ArtistSo I’ve been playing around with Adobe’s lateset version of Photoshop that will be coming out in the next month, CS5, and I have to say that I think it represents a bold, dramatic and fundamental...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Apr 2010 | 10:13 pm EMC Doubles Capacity for High-End Data Domain DD880HOPKINTON, Mass., April 12 /PRNewswire/ -- EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC), the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, today announced that its flagship single controller system for large enterprises, the EMC® Data Domain® DD880, now doubles its maximum capacity, offering support for up to 7.1 petabytes of logical backup storage.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Apr 2010 | 10:05 pm Exclusive Video: Bill Gross Talks About TweetUp and Gives a Tour of Idealab [BoomTown]
Bill Gross is widely considered the man who was responsible for the invention of paid search advertising, which heralded in such Web powerhouses as Google (GOOG). Now, in a can-lightning-strike-twice effort and armed with $3.5 million in venture funding from a group of leading investors, the well-known entrepreneur has decided to monetize Twitter on his own. Thus, Gross has just launched a public beta of TweetUp, a keyword-based bidding marketplace akin to the innovative Overture/Goto.com, which he created a decade ago. Gross will be the CEO of TweetUp, which will also offer an organic search service to surface the best tweets from the microblogging site. Coincidentally, Twitter is now aggressively moving to take over key parts of its ecosystem, which has largely been left to third-party developers. It is also expected to announce some kind of advertising system of its own this week. Tweet fight, anyone? Here’s two video interviews I did with Gross last week at his Idealab offices in Pasadena, Calif., including: An interview about TweetUp and, below it, a tour of the well-known incubator where he came up with his latest scheme: [ See post to watch video ] [ See post to watch video ] Source: All Things Digital | 11 Apr 2010 | 10:01 pm Palm is up for sale, says BloombergWe’ve been reporting for about a week now on a couple of rumors indicating that various companies are circling around Palm with possible intent to buy, and it looks like it all might be coming to a head. Bloomberg is reporting that Palm has officially put it self up for sale, with their sources confirming the previous rumors that both HTC and Lenovo are considering making the buy. Another name mentioned: Dell — but according to the same sources, Dell has already backed out. This next week should be mighty interesting for the folks in Sunnyvale. Stay tuned for more as we hear it.
Source: MobileCrunch | 11 Apr 2010 | 10:01 pm Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft .NET Framework 4 AvailableREDMOND, Wash., April 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Kicking off a global launch consisting of more than 150 developer-focused events, Microsoft Corp. announced the general availability of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Apr 2010 | 10:01 pm InDesign CS5 introduces interactivity to page layout (Macworld.com)Macworld.com - With InDesign CS5, Adobeâs page layout program has assumed a new dimension that takes the app beyond the traditional boundaries of print production. This new version lets you create documents that can incorporate complex interactivity, animation, Flash video, and MP3 audio files without working in a timeline or writing code.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 Apr 2010 | 10:01 pm Adobe launches Flash Catalyst CS5 (Macworld.com)Macworld.com - Adobe has unveiled Flash Catalyst CS5, a new professional design tool that lets users create Web application interfaces and design interactivity without writing code.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 Apr 2010 | 10:01 pm Dreamweaver CS5 supports content management systems (Macworld.com)Macworld.com - Adobe has launched Dreamweaver CS5, a new version of its professional Web authoring program to develop, test, and deploy Web sites and applications.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 Apr 2010 | 10:01 pm EMC Unveils Data Domain Global Deduplication ArrayHOPKINTON, Mass., April 12 /PRNewswire/ -- EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC), the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, today announced the EMC® Data Domain® Global Deduplication Array (GDA), the industry's fastest inline deduplication storage system for enterprise backup applications.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Apr 2010 | 10:01 pm Robo Spiders Are Multilegged Mechanical Marvels<< previous image | next image >>
Do we need an excuse to show you a gallery of the most amazing, mind-bending mechanical spiders ever to emerge from the fevered brains of roboticists? No, we do not. Something about multilegged creatures just seems to fire the imagination of robot builders. Their stability, agility and — let’s face it — creepiness are hard to match. They’re fast, resilient and occasionally cute. They climb walls, leap off buildings and spy on enemies. The amazing thing is how many people seem to be building multilegged robots lately, from NASA to British defense firms to French performance artists. Technically, not all of these are spiders. Many stand on six legs, not eight, and some were modeled after cockroaches rather than tarantulas. Details, details. On to the spider robots. Above: La PrincesseIronically dubbed “La Princesse,” this 50-foot spider bot roamed the streets of Liverpool in 2008. It was an art project that, instead of sending people fleeing in a panic, drew crowds of admirers. La Princesse was constructed by the French performance art firm, La Machine. Photo: Matthew Andrews
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 11 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm Paid Search Inventor Bill Gross Moves to Monetize Tweets With TweetUp–and Without Twitter (Plus Screenshots) [BoomTown]
Just as Twitter finally prepares to announce its plans to make money–after what has seemed an eternity–the man who was responsible for the invention of paid search is beating it to the potentially profitable punch and without the microblogging site’s involvement. Armed with $3.5 million in venture funding from a group of leading investors, well-known entrepreneur Bill Gross is launching a public beta of TweetUp, a keyword-based bidding marketplace akin to Overture/Goto.com, the first paid search system he created a decade ago. Gross will be the CEO of TweetUp, which will also offer an organic search service to surface the best tweets, a move that seems to put it into competition with Twitter’s own search service. This come just as Twitter is aggressively moving to take over key parts of its ecosystem, which has largely been left to third-party developers. TweetUp could now give these developers a chance to make money on Twitter without relying on Twitter. TweetUp is backed by Index Ventures, betaworks, Revolution LLC, First Round Capital, as well as other investors, including Mahalo’s Jason Calacanis and BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis. And TweetUp has struck a number of distribution deals with well-known Twitter search clients and Web sites–such as Seesmic, Answers.com and others–and will pay them half of its revenues. Gross has been working on the service since February at his Idealab start-up incubator in Pasadena, Calif. He said he got the idea after he was struck by how hard it was to sort through good tweets from the TED conference, as well as how quickly a more substantive tweet he did related to the global climate change event disappeared as more recent real-time ones replaced it. Said TweetUp in a press release about its system: “In addition to an algorithm that combines a variety of factors to determine relevance, tweeters can bid on keywords in a competitive marketplace very similar to what now occurs at Internet search engines. This sophisticated combination of factors pushes the best tweets to the top of the results of users’ searches, allowing them to find the most compelling tweeters, and it enables serious tweeters to expand their following quickly and cost-effectively. TweetUp search will work alongside Twitter’s traditional search to provide a richer array of results.” Twitter is also making several moves to monetize itself of late too, with most expecting an advertising system to be announced soon. It has also been adding to its tools, which is in direct conflict with outside developers. On Friday, for example, it announced it was purchasing Tweetie, maker of a popular Apple (AAPL) iPhone client for the messaging service. The start-up has traditionally relied on third-party developers to build apps for the service, much as Facebook did at its start. But Twitter management and key investors have recently been signaling that the company would be taking over key aspects of its business. This has caused tensions, obviously, in the wider Twitter ecosystem. Thus, it will be interesting to watch how Twitter reacts to what Gross is doing with TweetUp. (BoomTown also did an exclusive video with Gross about it all, which is posted here, as well as a tour of Idealab.) Here’s a few screenshots of TweetUp (click on the images to make them larger): TweetUp Client
Answers.com
Business Insider
Business Insider Search #1 Business Insider Search #2
And here’s the official press release from TweetUp:
Source: All Things Digital | 11 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm Akamai's Network Now Pushes Terabits of Data Every SecondThe growth in the number of broadband users and mobile Internet subscribers along and growing popularity on online video has helped push the amount of data flowing on the Internet for past few years. Akamai...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm idealab's Bill Gross Launches TweetUp, aMarketplace for TweetsOf all the times to launch into the Twitter ecosystem -- with developers quaking from last week's revelation that Twitter would compete with them head-on, and Twitter expected to launch a monetization...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm Art of the Steal: On the Trail of World's Most Ingenious ThiefWith his encyclopedic knowledge of surveillance and electronics, Gerald Blanchard could hack any bank, swipe any jewel -- there was no security system the career criminal couldn't beat.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 11 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm Flash Now Importable to HTML5 CanvasAdobe will soon introduce its Creative Suite 5 to the public. A tool in the new suite will allow for easy import of Flash animations into HTML5 Canvas code. Once IE9 launches, all major browsers will support...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm Gallery: Robo Spiders Are Multilegged Mechanical MarvelsCreepy, crawly spider bots (well, insect bots) -- the fevered brains of roboticists have come up with some mind-bending mechanical spiders and cockroaches over the years. Here are a few of our favorites.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 11 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm April 12, 1994: Immigration Lawyers Invent Commercial SpamNeed a green card? Have we got a deal for you! Spam ads gets their start on Usenet.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 11 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm How to Make Your Facebook Account PrivateFacebook's privacy controls are better than ever, but almost all user data is public by default and changing your profile settings is a fairly complex process. Fear not, Wired's How-To Wiki has you covered.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 11 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm Virtual Worlds, Real Money: Can Social Games Solve Music's Woes?Building on the success of virtual worlds like Farmville and Penguin Town, gamemakers are creating social games where our avatars could share songs — and make money for the music industry.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 11 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm Seagate teams with Paramount pictures, pre-loads DRM-laced movies onto FreeAgent Go portable hard drives
This is what you see when you plug in the drive, two folders — one with the movies, one with some Seagate software — along with a Seagate registration program. The movies folder contains 20 movies along with their cover art. These files are protected by some sort of DRM and while VLC plays them, the picture is scrambled. Users are supposed to login to a website to actually buy the rights to them, therefore descrambling the content.
Okay, so let’s say the user gets past this first step. They still have to create a profile on a Windows and Internet Explorer 8-only website to purchase the movies — of which there are only 21 to choose from so far.
The drive is supposed to come with a promo code to unlock the new Star Trek movie. I can’t figure out how to use it. The code doesn’t seem to do anything and I’m not spending $20 on the 720p movie just for this post. Sorry, I’m a starving blogger. The press release however states that “The films will be licensed for multiple devices to allow for portability and enjoyment of them on a desktop computer, laptop computer, or widescreen television, using the FreeAgent Theater+™ HD media player.” Don’t expect that much portability, though. These files are locked down. It’s clear that both companies involved are at least trying to provide consumers with a legitimate storefront for digital media. That’s great. A good amount of consumers want to follow the rules and not download illegal content. But at least this implementation doesn’t work. It’s clunky requiring consumers to bypass needless hurdles while only offers a tiny amount of content at a high premium. Back to brainstorming, boys. Let’s try again.
Source: CrunchGear | 11 Apr 2010 | 9:59 pm Overture Founder Launches Tweetup, “Adsense For Twitter”
Let’s zoom back to 1998 for a minute. Search engines at the time had no real way to monetize traffic beyond normal ads. Then Goto.com came along and turned that world upside down by allowing people to bid to be at the top of search results for whatever keywords they wanted. The rest is, well, history. GoTo was renamed Overture, went public and was later acquired by Yahoo for $1.6 billion. Google later settled IP litigation with Yahoo over Overture patents for 2.7 million Google shares. It’s fair to say that GoTo was the seed that launched tens of billions in search revenue, and it is the standard way that all major search engines today make most of their revenue. Fun fact: I was Goto.com’s attorney way back when it was just a baby startup, and passed on the opportunity to invest in a very early venture round. If I had made a different decision you would not be reading me here today because I’d be living on the island that I bought with the proceeds of that investment. /Fun Fact Back to Tweetup: At its core it’s a Twitter search engine with an advertising platform built next to it. The site launches today for potential advertisers only, and the main service will follow in a few weeks. There are three parts to the service – the destinations site, third party widgets, and the advertiser product. The destination site will rank Twitter results by time and via an algorithm to determine if a result should go higher than other more recent tweets containing the keyword queried. And users will also see advertiser (paid) results within that stream as well. idealab is saying that advertisers paying for ranking for specific keywords will also tend to be good results, since bad ads will be bid out of the system. Tweetup says that they are data sharing with Bit.ly to fine tune results, and paid results will always be noted as such.
Advertisers will be able to bid in three ways eventually: by impression, by new follower or by click through to an end URL. At first, says the company, advertisers will only be able to bid by impression, and the minimum bid is 1 cent per impression. The first 1,000 advertisers to sign up will get a $100 credit towards ads. And the signup seems fairly trivial. Give them your Twitter name and your bio is automatically imported; you can edit from there. Will this work? I’ll never bet against Bill Gross and idealab (again). A lot depends on what advertising platform Twitter ultimately unveils themselves. But one thing Tweetup has going for it is it’s bold, and publishers will likely eat it up for the additional revenue stream. They already have deals inked with Answers.com (mentioned above), Seesmic and Twidroid. And more will be announced shortly, they say. Blue Chip InvestorsWhen Bill Gross, idealab’s founder, has an idea it’s usually a very big one. And it often has a little bit of crazy mixed in, too. Investors aren’t waiting to see how this one plays out before jumping in. They’ve closed a $3.5 million first round of funding led by Index Ventures, and have taken investments from SV Angel (Ron Conway), First Round Capital, Betaworks, Steve Case, Jason Calacanis and Jeff Jarvis. Gross is the interim CEO of Tweetup, and Index Ventures’ Danny Rimer is taking a board seat. More screenshots below:
     
Source: TechCrunch | 11 Apr 2010 | 9:53 pm Sign the PublicACTA Wellington Declaration! The PublicACTA activists have been meeting in Wellington, New Zealand -- site of the next round of negotiations on the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement -- drafting a declaration on how the next global copyright treaty should read, and how it should be negotiated. The "Wellington Declaration" says that the world copyright treaties shouldn't be conducted behind closed doors in smoke-filled rooms, but rather in the full light of public participation at the United Nations, where copyright treaties are customarily made. The UN admits non-governmental organizations, journalists, and representatives from poor countries, while ACTA is only open to rich countries and lobbyists from powerful corporations. The Declaration says that copyright treaties should preserve the flexibility to make unauthorised use for purposes consistent with the public interest, from criticism to education; it says that privacy should be protected in copyright law, rejecting the principle that we should all be spied upon in case we are infringing on copyright; that web-hosts and search engines should be protected from liability rather than charged with policing their users; that DRM is not part of copyright and shouldn't be in a copyright treaty; that Internet access is a human right and that disconnection from the net for accusations of infringement is disproportionate and unjust; and that damages for infringement should be reasonable. It asks that criminal sanctions for copyright be reserved for genuinely criminal acts, non casual sharing. In short, the Wellington Declaration says a bunch of extremely sensible things that, if implemented, would give us a much better world. Tonight, they are collecting signatures on the Declaration, and tomorrow morning, they will present it to the ACTA negotiators as they sit down to plot the world's future in New Zealand. I've signed it. I think we all should.
The Wellington Declaration
(Thanks, Nat and everyone else who suggested this!)
Sign the PublicACTA Wellington Declaration!The PublicACTA activists have been meeting in Wellington, New Zealand -- site of the next round of negotiations on the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement -- drafting a declaration on how the next...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Apr 2010 | 9:51 pm Aussie Tech-Focused Wikipedia Launcheddaria42 writes "Wikipedia's great for some things — like looking up the in-depth history of 4chan, for example — but not great for others, such as finding out the micro-history of the technology sector in certain countries. That's why Australian technology publication Delimiter has launched a public Wiki site purely focused on the Australian technology sector — its personalities, issues, companies and events. Already the site has better coverage of some areas than Wikipedia, leading to the question of whether more such small Wikis should be created for certain verticals."
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Source: Slashdot | 11 Apr 2010 | 9:11 pm After iPad, Rivals Offer Variations on a Theme - New York Times
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 11 Apr 2010 | 9:00 pm Houston in a crowded race to be space shuttle's home - Houston Chronicle
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 11 Apr 2010 | 8:50 pm Twitter's Developer Conference Starts Early, With a Group Therapy Session [MediaMemo]
Instead, it’s trying to prevent a mass freak-out, brought on by Twitter’s apparent change in strategy last week: Rather than depending on outside developers to build out the service, it will compete with them, at least in some cases. Twitter’s shift has worried enough of the messaging service’s top third-party developers that they’ve hastily scheduled their own summit for Tuesday. That’s a day before Twitter’s official “Chirp” conference kicks off. The loosely organized gathering, assembled over the weekend via email, doesn’t have an official agenda. And Laura Fitton, the de facto ringleader, takes pains to describe it as something akin to a group therapy session (that’s my description, not hers). “Nobody’s angry or irrational,” says Fitton, the founder of Twitter app directory oneforty. “People are just looking to gut-check each other, and see, if this worries you, what is it that worries you? And if it does worry you, what do you want to do about it?” But other developers I’ve talked to who are plan on attending the pre-Chirp gathering are more explicit: They’re definitely worried. “It’s a total mess. People just feel that the trust was broken,” says a developer who wants to remain anonymous. “It’s very clear. The playing field is not going to be level,” says another, who also wants to keep his name out of print. Twitter’s moves have even prompted some developers to sketch out a scenario in which they leverage their combined user bases to create a sort of alternative Twitter, based on a open platform. That one seems like an awfully long stretch, because it depends on convincing Twitter users –not just developers and their investors–that there’s a compelling reason to move. A more likely scenario is that agitated Twitter developers take long looks at the advantages of working with other “real-time” platforms–Facebook, Google’s Buzz (GOOG), etc–while continuing to work with Twitter. That won’t help them with their core problem–they’re always going to be dependent on someone’s platform. But, in a best-case scenario, it gives them more options. In the meantime, Twitter doesn’t have to wait till Wednesday to soothe frayed nerves. Ryan Sarver, who oversees Twitter’s platform team, plans on visiting the pre-Chirp gathering. And Fitton says the group will be happy to hear from him–once they’re done venting in private. Source: All Things Digital | 11 Apr 2010 | 8:32 pm EdgeCast Secures $10 Million From Menlo Ventures
EdgeCast has secured $10 million in Series C funding from an investor group led by Menlo Ventures. The content delivery network has raised a total of $20 million since 2007, counting Steamboat Ventures (Disney’s venture arm), Mark Amin (Vice Chairman of CinemaNow) and Jon Feltheimer (CEO of Lionsgate) as investors. EdgeCast, which has been profitable since the fourth quarter of 2009, says the funding was necessary due to a surge in consumer demand and the need to scale up. Steamboat also participated in this round. Here’s an e-mail from a senior executive:
Under the deal, Menlo Ventures’ managing director, Pravin Vazirani, will join the company’s board of directors. Explaining his investment, Vazirani says: ” users demand a high-quality, instant-on experience – something legacy CDNs weren’t built to deliver. As both supply and demand for content continue to surge, EdgeCast is ideally positioned to capitalize on that growth.” Founded in 2006 by CEO Alex Kazerani and President James Segil, Edgecast competes with other CDNs (like Akamai, Limelight Networks) to help websites around the world deliver multimedia (i.e. music, video, live stream, etc) to the end user. One of the company’s strengths is its flexible pricing model, there are no fixed bandwith contracts. Customer prices are tied to actual bandwidth costs. Edgecast serves over a thousand clients including IMAX, WordPress, ESPN, Kelloggs, LinkedIn and Lionsgate. While it has several big names on its roster, the company has been aggressively targeting smaller businesses. Last month, the company announced a partnership with ClickStream TV to offer no-committment delivery services. “Enabling ClickStreamTV’s pay-as-you-go CDN service is exciting for us, because it enables us to help smaller businesses we might otherwise miss,” Segil said in a press release. EdgeCast has experienced spectacular growth over the past year. To put it in perspective the company had roughly 300 customers in early 2009, it past the 1,000 mark last September. EdgeCast has relied on a two-pronged marketing strategy: direct selling and a network of resellers. By working with its resell partners, like Deutsche Telekom, Edgecast has been able to expand its sales force without additional overhead costs. The bulk of their customers now come through the resell channel.
Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 11 Apr 2010 | 8:20 pm April is Global Astronomy Month: 'One People, One Sky''Thirty Nights of StarPeace' is an international event organized by Astronomers Without Borders and it's coming to your region during April, the Global Astronomy Month 2010.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Apr 2010 | 7:34 pm Google CEO says newspapers can make money onlineGoogle Inc. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt says he is confident that newspapers will find new ways to make money online by harnessing the vast reach of the Internet. Media executives have...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Apr 2010 | 7:07 pm Dear Authors, Your Next Book Should be an App, Not an iBook
So much has been said in the past few weeks about how the iPad will change the book industry but in almost all of the tweets, posts, and articles I’ve come across a simple questions seems to be completely dropped. Why do we have books in the first place? Paul Carr of TechCrunch published a post this morning that raised this question inadvertently. His argument went something like this: A.) The iPad is a better buy then the Kindle because it lets you do more than just read books. B.) Books can’t compete with other applications on the iPad. Partly because the screen is too bright but mostly because you will get distracted by games like Flight Control. C.) Thus reading, as we know it, is dead. Carr, in some senses, is right. Reading has changed. What’s not addressed is why this is a bad thing. Carr’s argument is rooted in a distinction between serious readers and non-serious readers. His example involves someone reading only a few paragraphs of a nytimes article, then posting it on Twitter. Carr defines this reading as, “reading in the way that rubbing against women on the subway is sex.” His example is vivid but also flat out perverse. Carr is confusing length with quality, and more profoundly, he’s confusing the ends with the means. The mission of an author isn’t to get you to ‘read all the words’, it’s to communicate in the rawest sense of the word. Whether you’re Jeff Jarvis or Dan Brown, you have an idea or a story and a book is a way to express it to the world. If you, as an author, see the iPad as a place to ‘publish’ your next book, you are completely missing the point. What do you think would have happened if George Orwell had the iPad? Do you think he would have written for print then copy and pasted his story into the iBookstore? If this didn’t work out well, do you think he would have complained that there aren’t any serious-readers anymore? No. He would have looked at the medium, then blown our minds. It’s not a problem that the experience of reading a book ‘cover to cover’ on an iPad isn’t that great as long as there are better ways to communicate on the device. On the iPad there are. What’s challenging for authors at this point is the iPad enables so many different types of expression that it’s literally overwhelming. Once you start thinking of your book as an app you run into all kinds of bizarre questions. Like, do I need to have all of my book accessible at any given time? Why not make it like a game so that in order to get to the next ‘chapter’ you need to pass a test? Does the content of the book even need to be created entirely by me? Can I leave some parts of it open to edit by those who buy it and read it? Do I need to charge $9.99, or can I charge $99.99? Start thinking about how each and everyone one of the iPad’s features can be a tool for an author to more lucidly express whatever it is they want to express and you’ll see that reading isn’t ‘dead’, it’s just getting more sophisticated. There are literary techniques, there will be iPad techniques. I’m 21, I can say with a lot of confidence that the ‘books’ that come to define my generation will be impossible to print. This is great.      
Source: TechCrunch | 11 Apr 2010 | 6:58 pm Tensions Rise for Twitter and App Developers - New York Times
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 11 Apr 2010 | 6:22 pm Adobe needs rebound with latest Creative SuitePent-up demand is expected to boost sales of the newest installment of Adobe Systems Inc.'s Creative Suite, the software package for professional designers and Web developers that brings inSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Apr 2010 | 6:18 pm Adobe needs rebound with latest Creative Suite (AP)AP - Pent-up demand is expected to boost sales of the newest installment of Adobe Systems Inc.'s Creative Suite, the software package for professional designers and Web developers that brings in most of Adobe's revenue. The product launches Monday.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 Apr 2010 | 6:18 pm Adobe to launch latest version of Creative SuitePent-up demand is expected to boost sales of the newest installment of Adobe's Creative Suite, the company's flagship software package aimed at professional designers and developers. It...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Apr 2010 | 6:15 pm Ex-Googler Obama Appointee Gets Buzz'edtheodp writes "Hillicon Valley reports that Rep. Darrell Issa of the House Oversight Committee is pressing White House Deputy CTO Andrew McLaughlin to explain his relationship with Google, where McLaughlin was employed as Google's chief lobbyist. 'The American people have a right to expect that White House employees are working to advance the public interest and not the interests of the lobby shops who formerly employed them,' Issa noted in the letter. 'The use of a Gmail account to communicate with lobbyists and evade transparency laws is at odds with President Obama's promises to limit the influence of lobbyists.' Concerns emerged after screenshots of McLaughlin's Google Buzz account emerged showing that a number of the search giant's top employees subscribed to the deputy Web chief's updates."
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Source: Slashdot | 11 Apr 2010 | 6:07 pm ATCi Unveils IP Content HarvesterLAS VEGAS, April 11 /PRNewswire/ -- National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) 2010 -- Antenna Technology Communications Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Apr 2010 | 5:47 pm Panasonic announces Micro Four-Thirds pro camcorder
The device that springs to mind when I see this thing is the RED Scarlet, which may (if it’s ever released) actually provide more versatility and more resolution in a smaller package and at a lower price. We’ll see how things hash out; Panasonic makes good camcorders and if this thing gets released first, it could tempt a lot of pros not willing to wait on RED’s perfectionism. Specs and formats can be found at the press release. 4/3 gets more interesting by the day. [via 4/3 Rumors; image via DVX User forums]
Source: CrunchGear | 11 Apr 2010 | 5:27 pm Comcast Disables VCR Scheduling In New GuideAn anonymous reader writes "Comcast has quietly launched a new on-screen guide for its cable boxes. What they're not advertising is that they've removed the ability to schedule VCR-compatible channel flipping any time more than a few hours in advance for people who don't buy the $20/month DVR service. What this means is that VCR owners are now forced to pay for Comcast's $20/month DVR service or else start their recordings manually. For us techies there might be a way around this, but ordinary VCR enthusiasts and owners of other recorders are left in the dust. Anyone know a good antitrust lawyer?" Raise your hand if you regularly use a VCR these days, too.
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Source: Slashdot | 11 Apr 2010 | 4:57 pm Ex-Obama adviser calls on FCC to reclassify Web access: report - Reuters
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 11 Apr 2010 | 4:16 pm iPad helps couple get engaged
So good luck to you Zach, and your unnamed fiance, from all of us at CrunchGear.
Source: CrunchGear | 11 Apr 2010 | 4:00 pm NYTimes Visits Menlo Park's TechShopridgecritter points out this interesting article in the New York Times on TechShop, a membership resource (aka hackerspace) in Menlo Park, CA for building stuff. "From hammers to 3D printers and laser cutters. Fun!" Along similar lines, and also recently in the NYT, a quick on-the-train conversation with Bre Pettis of MakerBot.
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Source: Slashdot | 11 Apr 2010 | 3:48 pm Bon Jovi Concert Sunday Live on iPad
Source: Wired Top Stories | 11 Apr 2010 | 3:15 pm Mars Microbes May Juice Up On Rocket FuelTwo critical puzzle pieces for life on Mars, separated by 32 years of conjecture and thousands of miles of terrain, are coming together to yield new clues for a “Genesis 2.0” on the Red Planet.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Apr 2010 | 3:14 pm Slow-motion RC cars look shockingly awesome
[via Jalopnik]
Source: CrunchGear | 11 Apr 2010 | 3:12 pm How Neuros Built Their Nearly Silent HTPCJoeBorn writes "Neuros has a blog posting discussing how they created their latest 'thin' HTPC to be nearly silent. Instead of using a net-top architecture (Atom or the like) they used a full 2.7GHz CPU and put their effort into making that nearly silent. The article talks about their efforts on fan selection, placement, control and vibration dampening. This route was chosen to 'give more headroom' for CPU hungry apps (web and otherwise) including Adobe Flash. Their solution costs $279; is this an appropriate trade-off for a device powering your TV?"
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Source: Slashdot | 11 Apr 2010 | 2:37 pm NSFW: I Admit It, The iPad Is A Kindle Killer. I Just Wish It Weren’t Going To Kill Reading Too
And then there’s me. I’m still not convinced. No. Strike that. I am convinced. And that’s what worries me. As I’m contractually obliged to never let you forget, I write the occasional book – and as such, I have a vested interest in the future of the medium, both in print and in digital form. One of the labels attached to the iPad – along with laptop killer and television killer – is Kindle killer. Why, the argument goes, would someone buy a dedicated e-reader devices for (low) hundreds of dollars when for (high) hundreds of dollars they can have a device capable of displaying books, movies, web pages and just about anything else? It was a question, frankly, not worthy of an answer. Or at least not one that wasn’t accompanied by a roll of the eyes. Almost everyone who described the iPad as a Kindle killer chose to ignore the fact that no matter how nice and shiny Apple’s screen technology is, it’s still not designed for reading books. Without e-ink, such as that found in the Kindle, you eyes get tired after a few pages – which is fine for replacing a newspaper, but is basically useless for a book. I wrote as much back in January. “Just wait and see” said the fanboys, “wait til you get your hands on an iPad before you jump to judgment.” “Hmmm,” I said, “Ok…” Well I waited, and now I’ve spent long enough playing with an iPad to jump to judgment. And you know what? The fanboys were right. The iPad is a Kindle killer, but for all the wrong reasons. Let’s finally put to rest the myth that the iPad is a good way to read books – it isn’t. Without e-ink – who’d have thunk it? – your eyes get tired after a few pages. You find yourself wishing you could print out the rest of the book and read it properly, away from the screen. Even the way that Apple displays books – in their Delicious Library rip-off way – suggests that they consider books to be just another kind of app. Something to fire up, play with for a couple of minutes and then swap out for the next five minutes of Flight Control. The iPad is emphatically not a serious readers’ device: the only people who would genuinely consider it a Kindle killer are those for whom the idea of reading for pleasure died years ago; if it was ever alive. The people who will spout bullshit like “I read on screen all day” when what they really mean is “I read the first three paragraphs of the New York Times article I saw linked on Twitter before retweeting it; and then I repeat that process for the next eight hours while pretending to work.” That’s reading in the way that rubbing against women on the subway is sex. And yet, and yet. There’s no doubt that the iPad is a beautiful device for almost everything else. It’s perfect for reading newspapers – Alan Alan Rusbridger’s space-filling fanfic not withstanding – and it’s perfect for email and web browsing and movies and games. If you have to carry around one device – for your commute to work, for an hour in a coffee shop, or on a long-haul flight – then the iPad is the one to carry. Which is precisely why I’m so worried for the future of books, and for reading. For a few months, the Kindle – or the Sony Reader, or whatever e-reader floated your (Three Men In A) boat – was the perfect take-anywhere device. Sales of ebooks soared as first early adopters, then everyone else, left their paper books at home and started carrying around something smaller and lighter that still gave them access to their reading material. Those same people are now the ones who will buy iPads, or presumably any one of the myriad alternatives that will soon be flooding the market. But those people don’t want to carry around two tablet-shaped devices to help pass their commute, so they’ll make the sensible choice and leave their Kindles at home. Sure, the Kindle is unarguably the better reader device, but what many booklovers (myself included) have arrogantly overlooked is that it’s not competing on a level playing field with other e-readers. It’s competing against the whole universe of portable entertainment. “This ebook hurts my eyes – I’ll just surf the web instead.” Even for those who love books enough to persevere with reading without e-ink will soon face another problem with the awesomeness of the iPad. The device does so many different things so well that there’s a constant urge when you’re using one to do something else. Two or three pages into a book, you’re already wondering whether you’ve got new mail, or whether anyone has atted you on Twitter. One of the joys of reading is to be able to shut yourself away from distractions and lose yourself in a book. When the book itself is packed with distractions, the whole experience is compromised. The first effects of this – I suspect – will seem like great news to publishers, who are increasingly frustrated by Amazon’s control over the ebook market. Having made a mental and financial commitment to their iPads, readers are unlikely to retreat back to their Kindle’s when their eyes start to hurt trying to read hundreds of pages on Apple’s device. Instead they’ll return briefly to physical books to scratch their long-form itch. They’re still portable, affordable and readable – and carrying one with you doesn’t feel like wasted space in a way that carrying a Kindle and an iPad would. Physical book sales will rise, Kindle sales will drop. Soon though, especially as more and more commuter friendly apps appear on the iPad and publishers push out more video content to further distract us from the need to read for prolonged periods, the idea of carrying a book will go back to seeming unnecessary. And at that point the iPad will indeed have killed the Kindle. But, for millions of casual readers, it will also have killed something far more valuable: the experience of reading for pleasure. Information provided by CrunchBase Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 11 Apr 2010 | 1:38 pm Mexico Will Shut Down 25.9 Million Cell PhonesSeveral months ago, as a way to prevent the use of cellular phones in criminal activities, the government of Mexico started a program to require all phone owners to register cell phones in their own names. The registry associates each phone with the listed owner's Clave Unica de Registro de Poblacion (CURP) [CURP, in English], which is supposed to be a unique ID for every Mexican citizen. Now, as nanahuatzin writes, Yesterday the timeline to register the cell phones expired, and there are [approx 26] million cell phones yet unregistered (English translation of the Spanish original). While the procedure is simple, sending a text message with the CURP to a special number, most people do not want to register: some are wary of the uses to which the government will put the data; others did not understand or did not know the procedure. So far, only 69% have registered, most of them in the last few days, while the system to register has been oversaturated. So in an unprecedented move for any country, the Mexican government is announcing the shutdown of 25.9 million cell phone lines. Meanwhile, as a measure of protest, hundreds of people have registered their cell phones in the name of the president of Mexico, Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, to show how pointless is the registry."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 11 Apr 2010 | 1:33 pm Viruses Harnessed To Split WaterCrucial step toward turning water into hydrogen fuelA team of MIT researchers has found a novel way to mimic the process by which plants use the power of sunlight to split water and make chemical fuel to power their growth.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 11 Apr 2010 | 1:12 pm iPad Marriage Proposal: Congrats Zach, You Dork
What I don’t understand is why he didn’t record the whole proposal on his iPhone or other device. We want video! Anyway, congratulations, you dork.      
Source: TechCrunch | 11 Apr 2010 | 12:31 pm What Advice For a Single Parent As Server Admin?Dragon_Eater, with "lots of experience setting up PCs and a passable knowledge of Linux but severely lacking in the server/client department," writes with a situation that probably faces a lot of parents: I want to set up three kids, 12, 14 and 15, with newer computers so they will stop fighting for time on the one ten-year-old Dell they share now. I can get the individual computers and a server put together without any problems, but the computer-handicapped single parent needs to be able to do the following via an simple application/webpage: View client computer status, On/off, sleeping etc.; Deny internet access, not LAN, just the web; Schedule time usage of computer, ex. 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. on school nights etc.; Force log-out and/or shutdown of clients, for grounding purposes; and Apply some kind of firewall filter for blocking undesired web content. And as the administrator for this network I would like the following options: Remote virus scanning of client machines, or scheduled task; Some kind of hardware monitor, high temp / fan speed low etc.; and Email alerts for various log files / alarms. Given the lists above I am thinking about a Linux based router/server machine and running Windows on the clients for game compatibility. I also know that a server and network boot client is possible but not sure where to start on that one."
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Source: Slashdot | 11 Apr 2010 | 12:29 pm Steve Jobs defends Apple's changes to iPhone developer agreement - Apple Insider
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 11 Apr 2010 | 12:23 pm From The China Social Game Summit 2010 in Beijing: State of the Industry And 6 Demos From Local Startups
Thousands of game developers are toiling in this country (nobody at the summit dared to make a better estimate), churning out dozens and dozens of games for local and international social networks each month. Some attendees at the summit estimated the market for virtual goods in China to be worth to the tune of $5-7 billion, whereas Americans spent $1 billion on virtual goods last year. (That sum, however, is just one yardstick to measure the value of the social game market, as most yuan are being made outside the social game sector, i.e. through “traditional” online games – which aren’t played within social networks – or through avatar-related sales in instant messaging services.)
Things in China’s social gaming space are moving at breakneck pace, but interestingly, the top genres in the last 18-24 months have been identical to the ones in the US and elsewhere. The most popular time sinks are farming games (the top Chinese app in this space is Happy Farm, which can be found on Facebook, too), restaurant simulations (RenRen Restaurant is like Cafe World on Facebook), and pet games (i.e. Happy Aquarium on RenRen, which is also popular on Facebook). All in all, estimates peg the current number of China’s social network users – and potential social game players – at 124 million (or one in three web users in this country). But Internet penetration in China stands at a mere 28.7% currently (US: 76.3%), which leaves room for even more gaming startups. Companies like Happy Farm maker Five Minutes [CN] or Rekoo are already successful outside their home territory (making serious money in the US and Japan, respectively), and nobody should be too surprised to see the next Zynga coming out of Beijing or Shanghai. Especially if you keep in mind that more of those 765 million mobile users in China will want to play games in the future, too. China Social Game Summit 2010 – LaunchpadAt the China Social Game Summit, a total of six domestic startups demo’d their newest games. Here are thumbnail sketches for all of them. (Note: Some of the links below lead to Chinese-only websites.)
Pitched as China’s first “island life simulation”, Dream Island can currently be played just by RenRen users (developer HappyFish is looking for international distribution partners). The game mechanics can be summarized with “Sim City on an island”, although Dream Island looks and sounds much cuter (the game was designed for females in the 18-40 age bracket). The game is based on a DIY concept, meaning players must build every object from scratch (houses, harbors, entertainment facilities etc.). The goal is to create and maintain an island, attracting as many outside visitors as possible. Friends can help friends to manage certain activities on the island. Here’s the demo video that was shown at the summit:
One of my personal favorite social games out there, Paintball Paradise is labeled as an MMOFPS (massively multiplayer online first person shooter), which can be played over different platforms. A Paintball Paradise player on MySpace, for example, can battle it out and chat with another player who’s using the game on Facebook, on the game’s main portal or through a widget. Maker Cmune says their aim was to fill “the gap between MMO, social games and FPS”, adding they created the world’s first “3D social shooter”. Paradise Paintball is based on a freemium business model. The game is monetized through sales of virtual goods, for example better weapons or more effective ammo. It has passed the 200,000 active user mark (for the social network versions) just yesterday.
You read that title right, and “Vegetables vs. Zombies” is what only can be described as a blatant rip-off of PopCap’s ultra-successful action/strategy social game “Plants vs. Zombies” (the Seattle-based company is actually quite popular in China). The presenter from Kingdowin dared to ask the audience if it thinks their game looks like PopCap’s (hint: yes, it does). At least the Asia representative from PopCap (who attended the summit in Beijing) took the game, which is currently being tested on RenRen, with humor. Judging from this web page, it looks like Kingdowin plans to roll out “Vegetables vs. Zombies” on Facebook, too. Just look at these screenshots (or watch this demo video):
Here’s a demo video:
Play4F.cn is one of the many Chinese Fourquare clones out there (some people at the summit told me there are 2-3 domestic Foursquare copy cats, while others spoke of ten and more). It works much like the American original, including core elements like integration with other social networks, badges, location-based hints for fellow users etc. But Huancai’s CEO Xiao Xie (an ex- Microsoft China employee) told me his app offers some features especially geared towards domestic users, for example a China-specific badge design. People checking into a place that’s renowned in one way or another for martial arts, for instance, get a badge associated with martial arts. To hit the nerve of Chinese users, the app also features a system of virtual goods. For example, a user can leave a virtual item at a certain place and specify another user who can pick it up when checking in at that place at a later time (for example a flower for a girlfriend). The app will be released for iPhone, Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile.
Pilgrimage to the West Online is a mobile game created by renowned mobile MMOG developer Moca World. The presenter from the Beijing-based company said that social games in China have three problems: it’s hard to retain users, games are difficult to monetize and mobile payment is still in its infancy. That’s probably why the adventure-like game, which is based on a famous Chinese novel, will be published in Japan, too (where offering mobile payment systems, for example, isn’t really a problem). Moca World said Pilgrimage to the West Online will combine social networking features with those found in MMOGs, including a wealth of elements related to Kung Fu and Buddhism. The target group for the “light game” are females aged between 20 and 25 (demo video).
     
Source: TechCrunch | 11 Apr 2010 | 12:09 pm Pro, con iPad opinions run the gamut - CNET
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 11 Apr 2010 | 11:30 am "Phone In One Hand, Ticket In the Other"Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that federal regulators plan a pilot project to test 'high visibility' crackdown efforts to curb cellphone use by drivers in two cities, Hartford and Syracuse, spending $200,000 in each city, while each state would contribute $100,000 more. The Transportation Department says it wants to send the message: 'Phone in One Hand. Ticket in the Other,' and plans on ramping up enforcement on state bans of hands-free phones by motorists, advertising the campaigns and undertaking studies to see if the efforts curb behavior and attitudes. Safety advocates say that curbing the behavior requires enforcement and education, which they say has been clearly evident in past efforts with seat belts with the 'Click It or Ticket Program' (PDF) that helped increase seat belt use to 83% nationally. 'It's time for drivers to act responsibly, put their hands on the wheel and focus on the road,' says Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who last year called distracted driving an 'epidemic.'"
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Source: Slashdot | 11 Apr 2010 | 11:24 am Going It Alone: How to Make Your Stuff In China, Part 2
Read Part 1 of this series. I am sitting in the lobby of the Royal Plaza Hotel in Mong Kok waiting for the owner of the factory that makes our Neverlate and Quad-Timer items to pick me up. The final legs of my journey were largely uneventful although it was nearly 2am local time before I finally closed my eyes to go to sleep last night. Dealing with the jet lag on the way out is easy. I basically stayed awake the entire time, dozing in out of a half-sleep the way that someone who is over six feet tall does on airplanes. Some five small airplane meals later, I had lost track of what meal I was supposed to be on. Acclimation to the time zone on the way back is much more difficult and if you’ve ever been to the International Pavilion at the CES you can attest to this first-hand through the observation of countless sleepy Asian booth attendants nodding off in uncomfortable plastic rented chairs. Before I continue where I left off from last time, I’d like to pause to address the question that was the inspiration for writing this article. That question is why? Why “go it alone”? Why take the route that I’ve taken rather than license your idea (actually, let me be more specific – your product concept) to another party? I am of the opinion that there is a place for licensing, but it is not for low cost – say, sub $100 – consumer products. If you have a proprietary technology – something that you embed in another product then, by all means, license it. If you have an idea for a consumer product and the desire/willingness to put for the effort to bring it to market, then you should go it alone. The reasons are many, but the main ones are (1) IP, (2) margin and (3) control. Let me speak to these one at a time. 2) Margin. Speaking now from the perspective of the licensor – product margins on consumer electronic products are thin. Manufacturing costs continue to rise, consumers (that’s you!) continue to demand rock-bottom prices and retailers remain stubborn in maintaining their, often very aggressive, margins. The result is that the guy in the middle gets squeezed. There is more room in some product segments than others but for electronics it can be hard to make the numbers work. As such, the idea of handing over an additional percentage to a product entrepreneur who walks through the door with not much more than an idea (and this happens to me once or twice a month) is not very attractive. 3) Control. Licensing an idea necessarily means relinquishing some degree of control over its final implementation. And that’s fine for some but not for me and maybe not for you. After all, your product is your baby and no one else is going to develop it in just the way that you want. I respect what Chris Hawker did with his PowerSquid product (see related CrunchGear series). In fact, it was his article that inspired me to reach out to CrunchGear. However, you need only read his series to get a feel for the pain that he experienced. While ultimately successful in his endeavor, it wasn’t clear to me that Chris felt very satisfied with the end result. It may have just been my interpretation of his story but I got the feeling that had he to do it over again, he may have tried his hand at bringing the PowerSquid to market independently. Now all of this is not to say that doing it my way is all a bowl of fruit. It definitively is not. One nice thing about licensing that is not true of bringing a product to market on your own is that someone else manages the marketing, sale, customer service, accounting and logistics of your product once it is “done”. Albeit at a great cost, but it is one way to see your idea come to fruition without having to spend the rest of your life dribbling it up the court, as I must. So what exactly, you must be asking by now, is involved with sourcing this thing yourself? Ultimately what all of this productizing boils down is execution. What I mean by this is the “putting of the one foot in front of the other”. There are lots and lots of little steps involved and it takes a detail-oriented demeanor to get it done right … to get it done at all, in fact. Alright, back to the task at hand. One step at a time. When we left off at the end of the previous installment, you had a “long list” of possibly appropriate factories that you located on GlobalSources.com and a decent product specification. Hang onto your product spec for the moment. The next step is to blast off an RFQ to the members of your long list using the automated features of GlobalSources.com to do so. The automated RFQ (or you can manually email to the listed contacts, if you prefer) is a teaser. The form fields will ask you to describe your project and you should do so at a high-level. Be sure to clarify that you’re not looking to purchase and private-label an existing product that the manufacturer produces but that you have an OEM project (a custom, ground-up design) that you’d like to discuss. Next you want to request that the factory sign an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) before you send over your product spec. Get one off the internet. The NDA is basically non-enforceable, in practice, but you should send it anyway. The factories know this, but sending the NDA (a) makes you appear serious about your idea and the protection of your IP – which you are and (b) is a handy way to take a first pass at eliminating factories that are not serious about working with you. This small bit of admin will quickly separate those that are genuinely interested in hearing more from you from those that aren’t. If you started with 12 factories on your long list, you’re probably now down to five or six. Send these factories your product spec attached to an e-mail describing your interest in working with them. You should reasonably expect two to four legitimate quotations to result from the dialog that remains with the factories that signed your NDA. Some will determine that they’re not a good technical fit for what you’re after, others will simply lose interest. Along the way they’ll ask you questions that you don’t know the answers to, like: What will be your initial order quantity? What’s your target FOB cost? What does FOB stand for anyway? (they won’t really ask you this, but you should know). These are all questions that are elusive to a first-time product designer, but questions that have easy answers … perhaps in the next installment that I write?
Source: CrunchGear | 11 Apr 2010 | 11:11 am For Windows Phone 7, Only The Best Is Good Enough
However, a recent interview (in Dutch) with Charlie Kindel during the Dutch DevDay event says that while the first release of WinPho 7 may be a little “lacking” initially, missing features will be added in the future… but only when they’re perfect. WM Poweruser have more highlights from the interview (including tidbits on the delivery of updates, xbox tie-ins, customisation control, and carrier billing), but the take-away here is that Microsoft have now shifted away from the “Jack of all” strategy that characterised WinMo, and plan to become a powerful master, ruling initially over only an immaculate few, but gradually expanding their dominion as they fully and completely conquer foreign lands (sorry… got a bit carried away there). Basically, new features will be added in the future, but only after they have been polished to perfection. “User experience” is key in their new strategy, and if WinPho 7 hopes to become the King of the OSes, it makes sense to only accept the best, right?
Source: MobileCrunch | 11 Apr 2010 | 11:08 am Telestream Defies the Economy with Record Growth and Major New ProductsLAS VEGAS, April 11 /PRNewswire/ -- NAB Show(TM)/booth SL3614 -- Telestream, a leading provider of digital media tools and workflow solutions, arrived at the NAB Show(TM) this week with three major new products and record-breaking revenue growth.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Apr 2010 | 11:00 am Telestream Debuts Vantage at NAB Show to Integrate Video Workflow SilosLAS VEGAS, April 11 /PRNewswire/ -- NAB Show(TM)/ Booth SL3614 -- Telestream®, the leading provider of video transcoding and workflow solutions, today announced Vantage(TM), the industry's first, enterprise-class software solution that integrates silos of digital video processing into a single managed workflow.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Apr 2010 | 11:00 am Telestream Unveils Wirecast Pro and V4.0 Live Streaming Software at NAB ShowLAS VEGAS, April 11 /PRNewswire/ -- NAB Show(TM)/Booth SL3614 -- Telestream®, a leading provider of digital media tools and workflow solutions, today announced a major release and a new product for its Wirecast® video streaming production software.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Apr 2010 | 11:00 am Telestream Revolutionizes Video Encoding with Episode 6LAS VEGAS, April 11 /PRNewswire/ -- NAB Show(TM)/booth SL3614 -- Telestream®, a leading provider of digital media tools and workflow solutions, takes video encoding to the next level with its announcement today of Episode 6.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Apr 2010 | 11:00 am Astronauts take 2nd spacewalk, overcome stiff bolt - The Associated Press
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 11 Apr 2010 | 10:00 am William Gibson answers questionsHaving finished the manuscript for his next novel, Zero History, William Gibson is taking a break from fiction by answering a wide-ranging set of questions from the readers on his blog. His answers are really good and interesting. This one should be graven in marble over every beginning writer's desk.QUESTIONS
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 11 Apr 2010 | 9:53 am A Calm, Reasonable Argument Supporting Apple’s Anti-Flash SDK Language
For those of you not following along, the story is this: Apple’s new SDK guidelines state, in no uncertain terms, that you can only use Apple tools to compile and submit iPhone and iPad apps. Nothing else is allowed. To many this is an affront to the general dignity of man and a call to arms. To others, and I suspect many others, it’s not a really a BFD.
He also points out “Microsoft’s mantra was (and remains) ‘Windows everywhere’. Apple doesn’t want everywhere, they just want everywhere good. The idea though, is to establish the Cocoa Touch APIs and the App Store as a de facto standard for mobile apps — huge share of both developers and users.” In short, Apple is like a car repair place with an open hiring policy. Anyone can come in and become a car mechanic. Heck, you can even get rich doing it. But Apple Car Repair doesn’t want some dude walking in with a rubber wrench and weird screwdrivers stripping the heads off of oil pan screws and breaking more than he’s fixing. Even Steve Jobs, in an email to a developer, admits this. He writes:
In short, if you don’t like his tools, get out of his garage. The problem here is the ascription of malice to what is, in the end, a business decision. While you have plenty of tools for programming in Windows, you also have plenty of tools for programming under OS X. However, to allow a multitude of frameworks for mobile devices is asking for trouble, especially when Apple’s goal, in the end, is to offer a superior mobile experience on their devices. Heck, even Windows Phone is limited to a few frameworks and tools. Whereas an operating system can survive some junk programs now and again, to have your phone BSOD is a horror. I actually experienced this on a long drive two weeks ago. I was running a navigation app and it crashed. The iPhone wouldn’t start up and I reset it, while driving, multiple times. Finally, I let it sit, charging, and after almost forty minutes the silver Apple logo disappeared and the phone booted. A phone is a device designed for 24/7 access (AT&T’s network notwithstanding) and letting just anyone come in and pound out some apps is a recipe for disaster. As a corollary, this control also offers a superior experience for the consumer. Until the iPhone, I never purchased a single mobile app on Symbian, Palm, or Windows Mobile. Ever. Period. Now I buy apps like mad and am looking forward to apps on the iPad. I think this behavior is a massive step forward in a word where mobile programming was often relegated to second tier. In short, learn Apple’s tools or hire someone who knows Apple’s tools. Just because you like Flash/.NET/C#/COBOL/Pascal/LOGO doesn’t mean Apple has to like it. As horrible as it sounds, Apple is doing this for your own good.
Source: MobileCrunch | 11 Apr 2010 | 8:08 am Invasive Fish And Mussels Threaten Great Lakes WalleyesImage 1: A round goby. Photo by David Jude. Image 2: A zebra mussel. Courtesy of Michigan Sea Grant.Image 3: Walleyes in a net. Courtesy of David Jude.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 11 Apr 2010 | 7:28 am Climate Skeptics 'Lack Scientific Credibility'The skeptics who frequently deny the reality of climate change in the world’s media lack all scientific credibility, charge three eminent Australian researchers who have just been listed among the world’s 20 most influential scientists in the field of climate change.Marine researchers Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Professor Terry Hughes and Professor John Pandolfi were ranked in the world’s top 20 by the international science citation analysts Thomson Reuters and ScienceWatch, for the decade 1999-2009.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 11 Apr 2010 | 7:14 am Wildlife made from collaged maps Artist Jason LaFerrera makes wildlife collages out of old maps. His first show is coming up in Richmond, VA, and he's posted some samples of the material he'll be showing, along with some limited run prints on Etsy. Jason LaFerrera (Thanks, Jason!)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 11 Apr 2010 | 6:58 am Cellphones Could Protect Against Deadly ChemicalsImage Caption: The sensor in the chip would identify the toxic chemical and send an alert to a central station and the cell phone carrier. Credit: DHS S&TSource: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Apr 2010 | 6:55 am Envivio Celebrates 10 Years of Vision and Excellence at NAB 2010LAS VEGAS, April 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Envivio, Inc. is launching into its second decade of pioneering video convergence by unveiling its most innovative line-up of Three Screens solutions and product demonstrations at NAB 2010.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Apr 2010 | 6:45 am Envivio Celebrates 10 Years of Vision and Excellence at NAB 2010Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Apr 2010 | 6:45 am UN Chief Calls For Climate Change ActionIn an interview with AFP on Saturday, UN chief Ban Ki-moon called for more political will to tackle climate change and urged Israel once again to freeze settlements to revive Middle East peace talks.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 11 Apr 2010 | 6:25 am Elbit Systems Schedules First Quarter 2010 Results Release for May 13, 2010Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Apr 2010 | 4:41 am UPDATE 1-Occidental to boost Oman crude production in 2012MUSCAT, April 11 (Reuters) - Occidental Petroleum Corp will boost its crude production in Oman by 50 percent to 150,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2012, senior company executive Bill Albrecht said on Sunday...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Apr 2010 | 4:14 am AXA PE in talks to buy Go Voyages -paperPARIS, April 11 (Reuters) - AXA Private Equity is in talks to buy tour operator Go Voyages from Groupe Arnault and Belgian businessman Albert Frere, Le Figaro newspaper reported.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Apr 2010 | 3:31 am UN warns as climate talks enter final day in BonnAnother failure in the quest for a treaty on climate change would cripple trust in the United Nations' ability to tackle global warming, the UN's climate pointman warned as more talks...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Apr 2010 | 3:25 am AT&T’s signal-boosting 3G MicroCell hitting the shelves in San Francisco today
If AT&T gets a bad rap for having poor signal quality in any city, it’s San Francisco. Part of this is due to the sudden influx of iPhones in the Silicon Valley that began in 2007, putting an almighty strain on the network; of the roughly 800,000 or so people living in San Francisco, we’re estimating that around 10 million of them (or 1,150%) are carrying iPhones. Throw in ridiculous topography and monstrous buildings, and it starts to get tough to properly blanket the entire area in radio waves. Thus, it should come as no surprise that San Francisco is one of the first cities to be getting AT&T’s cell-tower-in-a-box, the 3G MicroCell. AT&T just hit us up to let us know that we should start seeing the little router-sized, broadband-powered signal boosters on the shelves in their San Francisco stores beginning today. If you’re in a dead zone or if the ridiculously sized buildings around your home are causing your calls to fail on the regular, you might want to consider picking one of these up. It’ll set you back $150 bucks up front, but there’s no monthly fee — that is, unless you want unlimited minutes whenever you’re connected to your MicroCell. That’ll set you back $20 bucks a month. We just got our hands on one of these things this evening, and we’ll be heading up to the city later this week to give it a spin. Check back for a hands on report some time this week.
Source: MobileCrunch | 11 Apr 2010 | 3:12 am
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Excellent news for 
Digital shopping and fashion empire 
One thing 
Publishers will also have the ability to add Tweetup directly onto their sites to generate revenue. Tweetup will split revenue from ads 50/50, says idealab, and results will be pre-populated with keywords relevant to that page. They’ve inked a deal with Answers.com and will go live at launch with that and other partners, they say.
This post was written by 21 year old 
We just got a cute story from a reader named Zach. Apparently he found a new way to propose to your best girl, using Apple’s new wunder-device. I’ll let him tell his own story after the jump.
For one reason or another, I’ve spent the past few weeks down at the TechCrunch offices. As a result, it’s proved almost impossible to avoid iPad fanboy hysteria. Mike has 
From Zach Iniguez: 
Adam Hocherman, 34, is an entrepreneur and founder of the consumer electronics company 
A "Creator's block" sounds like something afflicting a divinity, but writer's block is my default setting. Its opposite is miraculous. The process of learning to write fiction, for me, was one of learning to almost continually be doing it *through* the block, in spite of the block, the block becoming the accustomed place from which to work. Our traditional cultural models of creativity tend to involve the wrong sort of heroism, for me. "It sprang whole and perfect from my brow" as opposed to "I saw it mispelled, in mauve Krylon, on the side of a dumpster, and it haunted me". I was much encouraged, when I began to write, by Manny Farber's idea of "termite art".
